The Famine and the Reactionary Duma

Published:Rabochaya Gazeta, No. 7, December 22, 1911 (January 4, 1912).

      Published according to theRabochaya Gazetatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1974],

      Moscow,Volume 17,

      pages446-450.Translated:Dora CoxTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Notso long ago, under the influence of last year’s
harvest, the hack journalists confidently held forth on the beneficial
results of “the new agrarian policy”, and, taking their cue from them,
some naïve persons proclaimed that there had been a turn in our
agriculture and that it was on the upgrade throughout Russia.

Now,as if timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the decree
of November 9, 1906, the famine and crop failure which have gripped nearly
half of Russia have shown most graphically and incontrovertibly how much
wanton lying or childish simplicity there was behind the hopes placed in
Stolypin’s agrarian policy.

Evenaccording to government calculations, the authenticity and
“modesty” of which were demonstrated during preceding spells of famine,
the crop failure has affected twenty gubernias; twenty million people “are
entitled to receive relief”, in other words, they are bloated from hunger
and their farms are being ruined.

Kokovtsovwould not be Minister of Finance and the head of the
counter-revolutionary government if he did not make “encouraging”
statements—there is really no crop failure, you see, but merely “a poor
harvest”; hunger “does not cause disease”, but, on the contrary,
“sometimes cures” diseases; the stories about the sufferings of the
famine-stricken are all newspaper inventions—as is eloquently testified
to by the governors; on the contrary, “the economic conditions of the
localities affected by the poor harvest are not so bad at all”; “the idea
of giving free food to the population is pernicious”, and, finally, the
measures taken by the government are “sufficient and timely”.

Thehead of the constitutional government forgot to mention his
brilliant invention designed to combat the famine,namely, that police agents should be given authority to organise “famine
relief”.

“Publicaid” even from legal liberal societies has now been abolished
and a Saratov police agent, as the only champion of the starving, has been
able to spend freely in taverns the funds entrusted to him to aid the
famine-stricken.

Naturally,the feudal landowners on the Right were enthusiastic about
“the detailed and, so to speak, all-embracing speech of the Chairman of
the Council of Ministers” (Deputy Vishnevsky on November 9); naturally,
the grovelling Octobrists promptly stated in their motion to pass to next
business that “the government has taken timely measures to combat the
effects of the crop failure”; and one of their leaders (by no means an
ordinary mortal!) indulged in a profound discourse on “unrestricted
circulation of canned fish as a means of providing the population with
desirable food”.

Hunger-typhus,scurvy, people eating carrion for which they fight dogs,
or bread mixed with ashes and manure such as was demonstrated in the State
Duma—all these things do not exist as far as the Octobrists are
concerned. To them the word of the Minister is law.

Andthe Cadets? Even on this issue they refrained from voicing a
straightforward opinion on the infamous behaviour of the government and
found nothing better than, through the medium of Kutler, one of their
speakers, to “draw reassuring conclusions from the comprehensive speech of
the Chairman of the Council of Ministers” (sitting of November 9); and in
formulating their motion to pass to next business, they gently described
the activity of the government as being merely “insufficiently [!]
systematic, inadequate, and not always [!] timely”.

Thequestion of relief and of its organisation is but one aspect of the
matter, as the Social-Democrat deputy, Comrade Belousov, correctly pointed
out in his speech. No less important is the fundamental question which
arises each time the discussion turns on the famine—the question of thecausesof famine and of the measures to combat crop failures.

Thefeudal landowners on the Right have a “very simple” solution: the
“loafing” muzhik must be made to work still harder and then “he’ll
deliver the goods”. Markov theSecond, the diehard from Kursk, thinks that it is “horrible” that “out
of 365 days in the year the muzhik works only 55–70 days, doing nothing
for three hundred days”, merely warming his back on the stove and
“demanding a ration from the government”.

Thesemi-feudal landowners among the Nationalists and Octobrists take a
“deeper” view of the matter. In line with their duty to sing the praises
of the authorities, they are still trying to persuade people that “the
question of famine will be radically solved when the land passes from the
hands of the feeble and the drunkards into the hands of the strong and the
sober”, “when the reform inaugurated by the late P. A. Stolypin is fully
implemented, when the stake on the strong is won”. (Kelepovsky’s speech at
the sitting of the Duma on November 9.)

However,the more far-sighted among the recent defenders of the decree
of November 9 are already beginning to sense that the breath of death is
hovering over this “great reform”. N. Lvov, a deputy from Saratov, who
was and, as he declared, still is “in favour of the law of November 9”,
shared with the Duma the following impressions he had gained “from contact
with reality”: “All those things you are saying here in the State Duma
somehow seem terribly removed from the actual suffering which one sees with
one’s own eyes”. “It is necessary to exercise great caution, and it is
necessary to spare that section of the population whom some people are
inclined to ignore. As a result of the law of November 9, many newcomers
have appeared in some gubernias, including Saratov, land prices have risen
and the condition of the poor population has become extremely
difficult.... Terrible hatred and condemnation are welling up among the
peasant poor—and some measures ought to be taken against this state of
affairs.... For relying on the strong by no means implies that the poorer
peasants ought to be hastened to their doom and left to perish in
poverty”, and so on and so forth.

Inbrief, the impressions “gained from contact with reality” are
beginning to open the eyes of this landowner who was “in favour of the law
of November 9”.

Theseeds of immeasurably more profound doubt as to the salutary effect
of Stolypin’s “agrarian reform” have beenplanted by this year’s famine in the minds of the Right-wing peasants. The
motion put forward by Andreichuk, a Right-wing peasant, “that the
government shall, at an early date, introduce into the State Duma a bill to
limit the amount of land in the hands of big landowners”—a motion
supported by all the Right-wing peasants and even by rural priests—shows
more than anything else along what lines the peasants, even the Rights
among them, think the “struggle against the famine” should be conducted.

Thedemand voiced by Andreichuk, the demand that comes direct from the
peasant world, provides additional proof (recall the statement of the
Right- and Left-wing peas ant deputies suggesting the compulsory alienation
of land ed estates in order to provide allotments for those who possess
little land, recall the speeches of the peasant deputies in the debate on
the decree of November 9, etc.), showing how deeply the need for an
agrarian revolution is penetrating into the minds even of the Right-wing
peasants, to what great extent even they regard the struggle against famine
asinseparable from the struggle“for land”.

Areal struggle against famine is inconceivable without the appeasement
of the peasants’ land hunger, without the relief from the crushing pressure
of taxes, without an improvement in their cultural standard, without a
decisive change in their legal status, without the confiscation of the
landed estates—withouta revolution.

Inthis sense this year’s crop failure is a new reminder of the doom
that awaits the entire existing political system, the June Third monarchy.